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Last week, I put aside all my work, shut down my phone and pretended for just a bit that I was living in an earlier, simpler time.

I watched a baseball game. I'm lucky to live near one of the greatest stadiums in the country, and for once, the hometown Orioles are competitive. But even when my team stinks, there's nothing quite like the respite that comes from cutting off the world for a few hours and just thinking about games.

I'm not alone in enjoying these brief escapes. Indeed, baseball – and most other major sports – are doing better now than they ever have. They're multibillion-dollar businesses, making millionaires out of most employees.

But that's not why I'm writing you today. You don't need anyone to tell you how popular American sports are – it's already a truism. Besides, there's no way for you to benefit from baseball's popularity – you can enjoy the product, but that's it.

Right?

Not so fast.

A New Investment Class

As an editor of Unconventional Wealth, I'm always looking for unusual ways to invest money.

That can mean many things – anything from a hidden or hated market... to an unexpected offshoot of a new technology... to an unusual commodity like art or collectibles.

Baseball cards fit the bill perfectly.

Most of us have heard the stories of extremely rare, expensive cards going for hundreds of thousands at auction (the rarest of all, a T206 Honus Wagner card, just sold for $2.1 million in April).

And most of us either had a rudimentary collection ourselves at one point or know someone who did.

But very few people think of baseball cards as a legitimate investment collectible. And that's a shame.

The truth is, if you know what you're doing, baseball cards can be a great store of wealth. There are four key things to watch for:

The popularity of a player. A hall of famer will gain value quickly, while journeymen rarely fetch anything.

The stage of a career. Rookie cards are by far the most valuable, with worth dropping quickly each year thereafter.

Choosing the right foreign currency to add to your portfolio may hinge on a valuable nugget of information or insight. That's where our foreign currency resources can come in handy. Available 24/7, you'll find individual research pages on all major and emerging currencies available at EverBank. Each page provides:

No one could have predicted the past two months in either stocks or bonds... even those calling for a breather in stocks or a turning of tides in bonds, like me. What I can do is show you how to take advantage of what has happened and is still happening today in this wild market...

On May 14, I showed you why the 32-year-old bond rally was ending. I also showed you how to begin protecting yourself from this turning of tides – and even prosper – by buying the ProShares Short 20+ Year Treasury ETF (NYSE:TBF).

Since then, bonds across the board have fallen apart. They now yield 2.7% – up from 2% at the start of May (yields rise when prices fall). TBF is up 9% since I first wrote about it.

The stock market, however, has indeed taken its long-overdue breather.